18.1 Disappearing Desktop Icons

Thatlhurt · Post by **Thatlhurt** » Tue Dec 20, 2016 3:19 pm

I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing issues with desktop icons that go missing with Cinnamon in 18.1. I believe this is likely limited to multi-monitor users. Initially I thought this might be an issue with the nvidia driver, but I can replicate this when booting with the live image and using only software rendering. Essentially, all desktop icons except those for mounted drives vanish after reboot or logout. They can be restored by toggling the desktop layout options in Preferences > Desktop. I never saw this with Sarah. A Google search turned up a few others with similar issues:

https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/5978

Graphics card is a GTX 970.

I have rolled back to 18.0 for now, but could tinker and perhaps provide more information if anyone else is seeing this.

finfly · Post by **finfly** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 1:00 am

I have same issue with 18.1 on my 2012-era laptop connected to dual monitors (VGA+HDMI) with Intel GPU. On 18 icons only sometimes did not show up on boot, but 18.1 does it every time.

blockhead47 · Post by **blockhead47** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 11:26 am

I have the same issue with 18.1, Cinnamon. I loose desktop icons on the second monitor, only after a reboot.
Toggling "Show desktop icons on all monitors" in desktop preferences always seems to restore them.

Thatlhurt · Post by **Thatlhurt** » Wed Dec 21, 2016 6:05 pm

In my case I have one monitor connected via DVI and one through HDMI. The only option that worked consistently was to choose to show icons only on the non-primary display, in this case the DVI connected monitor. Anything else and icons were lost at logout.

Pentarctagon · Post by **Pentarctagon** » Fri Dec 23, 2016 4:31 pm

I have the same problem with a triple monitor setup. All are connected to a GTX 1060 via DisplayPort, and the icons on the primary monitor do not show up on login, but the icons on the non-primary monitors do show up. This is happening on 18.1 after upgrading, and did not occur on 18.

ugly · Post by **ugly** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 1:56 am

Same problem on a dual-monitor set up.

Disconnecting the secondary display causes the icons to appear again. Re-connecting the secondary monitor will cause the icons to disappear on the next reboot.

dsnssc · Post by **dsnssc** » Mon Dec 26, 2016 12:36 pm

I have this issue also with dual monitor setup.

thobin · Post by **thobin** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 2:26 am

I have the same problem with my dual monitor set up and so does my boy. Any fixes or work arounds? As I understand it it is a Nemo crash, or am I off here?

TA

PLakesCpl · Post by **PLakesCpl** » Tue Jan 03, 2017 11:33 am

I have this problem on my Acer laptop. Not running dual monitors. Gets very annoying having to reboot to get the desktop icons working.

gary.zw · Post by **gary.zw** » Tue Jan 03, 2017 2:10 pm

I have the same problem with Mint 18.1 Cinnamon. When it happens I click the "Show desktop" in task bar and it corrects it.

Janni · Post by **Janni** » Thu Jan 05, 2017 10:54 am

Same problem here in 18.1, running dual screen, nvidia driver and Cinnamon. Was working since 17 (have upgraded ever since).
As a workaround I suppose a short bash script at startup (restart nemo) could bring icons back, but it's not a solution to the problem.

xonxor · Post by **xonxor** » Thu Jan 05, 2017 6:02 pm

Take a look at the following thread on Linux Mint's Launchpad.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1650977

Once in Launchpad, please also make sure to login, at the top of the page click the yellow circle with an inscribed pencil next to the list of users this bug affects, and select 'Yes, it affects me'.
This way we can up the heat and hopefully attract the attention of the developers for a potential fix.

Any participation in testing out this issue, within that same thread would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

cameraman · Post by **cameraman** » Thu Jan 05, 2017 7:03 pm

Had the same problem a few times not sure why it's happening all I do is open up the home folder and the icons appear.

idle · Post by **idle** » Tue Jan 10, 2017 9:20 pm

Yeah having the same issue. I have a bunch of files that I set firefox to download to desktop by default. Booted up and their all missing. Went to Files on the taskbar and then Desktop and the files are there. Don't know why this is happening, I hope they fix this problem.

R0UNDEYEZ · Post by **R0UNDEYEZ** » Mon Jan 23, 2017 3:56 pm

I just installed Mint 18 the day before yesterday and this problem also started happening to me today when I ran the newest update to the kernel available to me. I am also running dual monitors and have an Nvidia video card running the Nvidia drivers.

When I reboot my wallpaper is gone, I am left with a grey desktop and I only have icons that had been placed on my secondary monitor. I can fix it by entering desktop settings & telling it to only display icons on the primary monitor. Once I do that, all the missing icons return and checking "display icons on both desktops" puts everything basically where I had set them across both monitors. However, none of these settings stick after a reboot, and its the same thing with icons gone and a grey desktop again.
I think the wallpaper disappearing might be related to something else, while searching for a solutions I read some cases of people having wallpaper disappear when they have the wallpapers on a different partition which i do. I only mention it because the problem did not begin for me until I applied that kernel update.

*Edit * Moving the wallpapers to the Mint partition did fix the issue of having to reset the wallpapers with every reboot as I expected.

rkitover · Post by **rkitover** » Sat Jul 01, 2017 3:40 pm

I had this problem in the 18.2 pre-release for whatever reason.

The way I fixed it is I put:

nemo-desktop

into Startup Applications with a 2 second delay.

Thatlhurt · Post by **Thatlhurt** » Tue Jul 04, 2017 12:22 am

Issue is fixed for me in 18.2

Janni · Post by **Janni** » Tue Jul 04, 2017 3:32 am

Thatlhurt wrote:Issue is fixed for me in 18.2

Yep, for me too. Icons not apart of Nemo anymore in 18.2

MidleyMint · Post by **MidleyMint** » Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:07 am

Re: 18.1 Disappearing Desktop Icons
Yesterday I installed the new 18.2 version (64bit) of Linux Mint (Cinnamon) to teplace v. 18.1.
To my horror the desktop was blank, except for my usual background image, without any icons!
I came to this forum to see if there was any info or any solution to this problem - lots of discussion to what has seemed a widespread problem for several years but no definite answer. Spending half a day looking at the problem have a last managed to get the icons re-appearing on the 18.2 desktop.

I found that the icons do appear on the desktop if the file /usr/bin/nemo-desktop is clicked, but also significant is a config file named nemo-autostart.desktop which was found to be the prime source of the problem. Looking with a text editor at that file this was the full contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Nemo
Comment=Start Nemo desktop at log in
Exec=nemo -n
OnlyShowIn=X-Cinnamon;
AutostartCondition=GSettings org.nemo.desktop show-desktop-icons
NoDisplay=true

The last line was obviously responsible for the blank desktop without any icons: "NoDisplay=true" surely needs to be =false
Of course the file could not be edited within the text editor, so I went to Terminal to edit it:

sudo -e //media/[ownername]/[Drive name where LinuxMint installed]/usr/share/applications/nemo-autostart.desktop

Expecting that was all that needed to be done,found that was not true when on rebooting the computer the desktop appeared again without icons!
The solution was to open the 'Startup Appplications' program and add first the 'nemo-autostart.desktop' file (the full string as edited in Terminal) and second the file /usr/bin/nemo-desktop
Rebooted the computer and all was right, with icons on the desktop

Hope the above also works with the previous range of situations found with disappearing desktype icons.
regards
MidleyMint

itsagas2 · Post by **itsagas2** » Mon Mar 18, 2019 2:59 pm

"nemo-desktop", this fixed my missing desktop icons issue also with LM 19 cinnamon.